–and I believe it is the key point of this war- that Georgia is actually one of the only route to export oil extracted from the Caspian sea (see map) to western countries, and the only one which is not directly controlled by Russia.

However, we have hardly heard in the mainstream medias

About 1,6 million barrels of oil transit every day across Georgia, notably through the BTC pipeline which goes from Azerbaijan to Turkey. The volumes transiting through Georgia should at least double in 2010 (between 3 and 6 million barrels a day).

Keeping this fact in mind, it is also notoriously known that the Georgian president Mikhail Saakachvili, who was elected in 2004, is definitely pro-West and anti-Russia.

Since his election, most of the Western oil majors have therefore decided to invest in Georgia in order to bypass Russia regarding the trading of Caspian oil.

Before the war, Georgia was considered as a key element of the “East-West energetic corridor

“, the purpose of which was to export the Caspian oil without Russian assistance.

The control of the Caspian oil transit sounds to me (and to many people in the oil sector) as a reliable perspective to understand why Russia launched such a massive operation and was ready to pay a heavy diplomatic price for it.

That would explain why the Russian army has systematically bombed oil storage and transit facilities, notably the BTC pipeline.

Russia can not afford to lose such a geopolitic asset as the Caspian oil. Putin was ready to launch a war for it.

But are we so sure Bush did not have the same type of thinking when he decided to free Iraq? We might talk about it in another post.